


Rolling On

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little fandom-stocking thing I...actually forgot I wrote. (GJ, self!) Picks up after ROTF, pre DOTM, because Mikaela deserves better than what Bay did to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rolling On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Mikaela threw a shoe at the knock on her door. “Go away!” She felt like she was thirteen again, throwing a tantrum, but at least she was old enough to want to be alone.  
  
“I ain’t going nowhere.” He wouldn’t, either. If she had inherited anything from her dad other than mechanical skills, it was sheer bullheaded stubbornness. Probably why she’d stayed with Sam for so long in the first place.   
  
Sam. Shit. She'd been rejected before, but never like that. Never just pushed aside, like last season's video game.   
  
“You gonna let me in or am I gonna have to pop the hinges?”   
  
She cursed again, rolling herself off her bed to open the door. “I’m fine.”   
  
“You don’t look so fine,” Dad said. He was like a universal constant, scruffy stubble and cigarette stained teeth and that way of always looking just a little bit dirty. “Who I gotta punch?”   
  
“Not funny,” Mikaela said, even as she felt the tears well up again. It wasn’t funny, but it hurt, the idea that her dad probably would go beat Sam up and that Sam probably deserved it. But it wouldn’t bring him back.   
  
“That boy, isn’t it?” Her father leaned on the door frame, his work shirt bunching up over his powerful arms.   
  
She nodded, and the tears burst the dam of her resolve.   
  
Dad stood there for a moment, uncertain, that awkward way ex-cons probably have facing things that a punch or a threat won’t fix, and then he stepped forward, tipping her chin up with one hand. “He ain’t worth it, baby. Never was.”   
  
“Dad—“  
  
“Don’t you ‘dad’ me, young lady.” Oh God, he was trying so hard to do the right thing, but he sounded like some terrible sitcom dad figure and it was just so wrong, but she could tell it was as close as he could guess as the right thing to do.   
  
And then he floundered, trying a smile and missing it by about a mile. “Look, Kales. I never was the greatest guy, but even I knew, when I met your mom, that I’d gotten my hands on something good. This boy—because he is a boy, goddammit—don’t deserve you. Never did.”   
  
“It’s not like that!”  
  
He said nothing, just shaking his head. He didn’t need to: she remembered the looks he’d give her after getting blown off another Skype date after another, even after Egypt. He’d look at her, then look away, his mouth pulling into a frown, forcing himself to shut up.   
  
“It’s college. He’s just…busy.”   
  
Dad snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet he got _busy_.”   
  
The innuendo stung, all the more because she knew it was probably true. She was just the one left behind, a damsel who wasn’t in distress.   
  
“Listen.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just, man, when you love someone, really, you don’t let nothing stand in the way. I wrote home to you every week, remember?”  
  
“Y-yeah,” she admitted. Sometimes short letters in his scrawly handwriting, but she figured there probably wasn’t much about prison he wanted to talk about, at least to his daughter. And he’d ended every letter, every one, telling her how proud he was of her.   
  
His hand dropped to his jeans, and he tugged out a folded up letter, holding it out to her. “I was gonna save this, you know, for later or something, but.”

  
She took it, smoothing out the creased paper, her eyes barely registering the return address, her own name on the addressee label. ‘Congratulations’, it began. She looked up, confused.   
  
Dad rocked forward. “All these new bikes and stuff have computer parts. So I figure someone’s gotta go up and get trained, official-like.”   
  
“So you applied…in my name?” She flipped over the envelope, reading the address. ‘Motorcycle Mechanics Institute’. Wow. Top of the line.   
  
“Yeah. I mean, maybe it ain’t totally legal-like, but I wasn’t gonna actually go or anything. It was your transcripts and stuff that got you in. Just, you know, trying to be a dad.” He spread his hands, embarrassed. The story of his life, really. Trying, at any rate. He looked up, the cocoa-brown of his eyes almost hesitant, and she could see underneath the man her mom must have fallen for. “You mad at me?”   
  
“Dad…!” Mikaela flung her arms around him, the envelope crinkling against his shoulders, and she felt a new kind of tears scald her cheeks. She didn’t trust herself to any other words. Maybe she inherited that from him, too.   
  
He hugged her back, almost gingerly, and she felt like she was a little girl again, before he’d gone away to jail, and her daddy was everything strong and safe and sure in the world. And he spoke, his voice rough with emotion. “Know you’re gonna make me proud, little girl.”  
  
She was damn sure going to try.   
  
And that was how she ended up in Chicago when the Decepticons attacked.


End file.
